Slide 1. Welcome to Chapter 1. The following chapter is called Business Plan. The author is Manuel de la Llave.

Transcription

1 Slide 1 Welcome to Chapter 1 The following chapter is called Business Plan The author is Manuel de la Llave.

2 Slide 2 After this chapter you should be able to explain what a business plan is and why you need one. You should know the elements of a business plan and have an overall idea of what you should analyze and include in each part and you should be able to explain why the business plan will serve you as a guide to take your project to reality. This chapter will give you a good overview of the different aspects that will be treated in more detail in the following chapters.

3 Slide 3 Here you can see the content of this chapter. We will start with the general definition of a business plan. Then you will get more detailed information regarding the topics: executive summary, company description, products and services, market and competition, marketing and sales, business system and organization, realization plan, financial projections, and finally the management team.

4 Slide 4 The business plan is part of the strategic plan. It is a document, which describes all aspects of your project. It should give answers to questions like: Who are we? What are we going to do? Why are we going to do it? How do we plan to do it? Why is our project unique? To whom will it be focused? How much is it going to cost? And what do we expect to earn? The business plan is as also an essential tool in obtaining financial support and can serve as a guide to follow the lines established in the strategic plan.

5 Slide 5 All parts of a business plan must be related and consistent between each other. A business plan should include the following chapters: an executive summary, a description of your company, its products and services, a description about the market and the competition your company faces, a chapter about your marketing and sales approaches, a chapter describing the organization of your business and a part describing how you plan to realize your project. It should also contain financial projections, which are the most important parts when it gets to negotiations with potential financial supporters. Also, a description of the management team and a chapter on opportunities and risks which may impact the success of your plan should be included. On the following slides each chapter will be discussed.

6 Slide 6 The executive summary contains a short, concise description of the most important elements and should be written last because it summarizes the entire plan in 1 or 2 pages. The executive summary should include the purpose of the company and should answer the question: What kind of assisted reproduction medicine are you going to perform? The next points are corporate goals and corporate vision which reflect all of your strategic planning. The executive summary must include anything that you consider as a key factor, i.e. technology. Furthermore, the target financial figures should be stated such as: start up costs, resume of the needs and cost of capital, and the expected results of the company. You should make sure that the portrayal of your operation is consistent.

7 Slide 7 The company description should give an overview of your company, your business model, the products and services you plan to offer, the legal environment, your growth strategy, and the service value.

8 Slide 8 It is important to know the size of the market and the part that you will be able to reach and convince. This topic is dealt with in the business plan chapter Market and Competition. In order to define the size of the market you can either use real data or estimate the market size: real data could be numbers of IVF cycles, which in some countries have to be declared. But in most cases you have to make estimations derived from available information or good assumptions. Data you could use for estimating market sizes could for example be: population indexes, rent distribution or infertility indexes. You may even be able to receive the statistics on the use of gonadotropins in your influence area. Some Fertility Associations also offer data on the number of treatments by countries and regions. You cannot assume that you will reach the entire market, so you have to identify the target market that will be defined by your strategy. Maybe you are trying to compete by differentiation, so you should estimate not only the number of couples that will have fertility problems but also the ones that can afford it. Once you have your target market you should estimate the part you are able to reach and the future growth of your market.

9 Slide 9 When talking about the market you also need to know your competitors and what your advantages and disadvantages are compared to them. In order to learn this, you have to study the competitive landscape: how many clinics are located in your region and how are they segmented? Which services do they offer and what are their price ranges? Competitive advantages or disadvantages may for example occur in areas like the technologies offered, the personnel, the success rates or costs.

10 Slide 10 To determine how to reach your target audience you need to first establish objectives about market penetration such as your targeted customers, the size of your market niche and projections on market penetration. Once you have defined your objectives and your lines of action, beginning with a marketing strategy containing potential referees such as hospitals and gynecologists, you should set up a marketing plan. How do you want to reach your patients and people who may recommend you? We will learn in more detail about these topics in chapters 11 and 12 about Marketing and Online Marketing.

11 Slide 11 The chapter business system & organization comprises of mainly organization and workflow of your unit and can be separated in three parts. Part one deals with the legal form of your enterprise. There are many different legal forms which have different advantages and disadvantages concerning for example personal accountability or fiscal treatment. Because the potential legal forms differ from country to country the best option is to get advice from a legal expert. Part two deals with the location and facilities. Here you describe the location and the facilities where you are located. Finally, part three deals with the business system. The flow of your operational processes is described here; starting from the entrance of a patient to the last procedure that patient receives. You should use hierarchies and the different levels of your organization: from purchases to the service through research and development. You will learn more about location, facilities, and business systems in chapters 4 and about organization and workflow in an IVF Clinic in chapter 5.

12 Slide 12 Time to market is very important. Delays result in an increase of start-up cost and other problems. You can use a Gantt chart to visualize how much time each step should take on the way to realizing the project: from the time needed to find the location, to get all approvals and licenses, to install all facilities and to build the team etc. Some subprojects can only be started after completion of a previous task. You, therefore, need to mark the critical path, which will go through your subprojects; this could cause delays of your final offer.

13 Slide 13 The financial projections show what you are going to spend and earn within the next years. They should reach from 3 to 5 years. For the first year the projections should be done monthly, the next year you can do them on a six month basis or even yearly. They should include a balance sheet, your profit and loss account, a cash flow statement, and a sensitive analysis including different scenarios for future development which can result from opportunities and risks you are facing. In addition, there should be a year 0, which contains the initial costs, arising for example from formation of the team or from consultants, lawyers, or financial advisors. It should also contain the time to market. How much time will it take from the first expenses until treating the first patient? More details on the financial projections will be explained in chapter 14: Financial Planning.

14 Slide 14 The part of the business plan related to the management team contains a brief description of the curriculum vitae (CV) of the management team and their experiences. It should emphasize previous proven experience more than academic background as well as emphasize the relevant abilities and qualifications of your team. The abilities of your team should be divided into two sections: hard skills like technologies, financing experience or HR experience, and soft skills like initiative, communication, negotiation talent or assertiveness. Weaknesses should be pointed out and external consultants should be named for these.

15 Slide 15 Here we see an example of an organizational chart which might be added to the section describing your management team. This is the organization chart used by the management team of the IVI Group.

16 Slide 16 To summarize, a business plan is a document which describes all aspects of your project and that it is essential to convince potential investors to support your project. The business plan consists of several chapters: the executive summary gives a résumé of the entire plan and should be short and understandable to everybody. The company description explains what the company is about, and which products and services it will offer. The market and competition chapter describes the size of the cake, the piece of the cake you want to have and the pieces of cake that others have. The marketing and sales chapter describes how you are going to address your potential patients. The chapter Business system and organization describes the legal form, the organization, and the workflows of the company. The realization plan gives an overview of timelines and dependencies of individual tasks on the way to project realization. The financial projections are the heart of the business plan. They should show how much money you plan to spend and earn within the next years. They are the result of the entire plan and the plan has to make those numbers realistic. The chapter Management team shortly describes background and properties of your management team. Be sure that there is a red line through your entire plan and that the individual parts are consistent with each other.

17 Slide 17 Here we recommend some websites and books for your further reading.